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Show MNEY COULDN'T MAKE APPttS A SENATOR, - ygRSon to suppose that Mr. Rocke-fttlrjed Rocke-fttlrjed to get Inside the charmed rtffat separate capital letter Society yjK, though ho has his own social 1SjjCny -warrant for believing that he &Kbllc office, either municipal, State Itjgpr his money would have helped indirections is something which no (Kl or at least his brother William, i3Jjrs, and the Standard Oil company ((iBllngs with a man who believed, iElxteen or seventeen years ago, .Ijlttld put him Into a( public office of jfljence. ngjEfis J. Edward Addlcks. Sixteen ilWtfls memorable fight to be elected 'wTator from Delaware. In March iWgtgave It up, after having spent lgs'of money, according to his. own i5?comrnon knowledge of all Dcla- fjtof Delaware was the first of the LMtidpt the Constitution. From time InElt had been represented In . the f-lsey two Democrats. But In 188S, Ileal wave which carried the Re-''-32T' Delaware was moored within '"bor and It became evident within Velectlon tnat the PemocrnUcSena-'"its PemocrnUcSena-'"its about to be broken. Ijrope when the election took place. 3SKe Senatorial ambition and fixed !1SQ?,S aV0,'Ite State with remark-Ifl'Kit remark-Ifl'Kit before the cable had told the news on the other side, Addlcks wired to his friends that he wanted to be a Delaware Senator, and asked them to "hold the seat" for him. The seat which Addlcks wanted held was then occupied oc-cupied by George Gray, now a United States Judge, who headed President Roosevelt's coal strike commission com-mission a few years ago. It "had already been decided de-cided by the Republicans that Anthony J. Hlgglns should take Gray's place In "Washington, and therefore there-fore the Addlcks cablegram didn't make much of an impression. Early In 1889, however, Addlcks Journeyed to Dover, the little State's capital. ,It was Just about then that he chartered his Delaware Bay State Gas company, concerning which that accomplished litterateur and financier, Thomas. TV. Lawson, has since written so entertainingly. en-tertainingly. Addlcks had with him on that visit to Dover two friends of his from Boston. Addlcks and his friends made extensive and ostentatious osten-tatious Inquiries about the political situation in Delaware, Dela-ware, learned for the first time, apparently, that Hlgglns was, a candidate for the Senatorship, and announced an-nounced the candidacy of 'Addlcks, whereupon, the latter shook hands with everybody within reach. The visit and its Incidents must have been exploited' by a most clever press agent, for the next day the entire country read all about It at the breakfast table, and before the day was over both Delaware and the rest of the country were eagerly asking: "Who Is Addlcks?" Ad-dlcks?" It wasn't long before the same clever press agent let all the world Into the secret of Addlcks's Identity. Not much was done toward pushing him for the Senate that year. The one vote in the Legislature which he was said to control was cast for Hlgglns, and the latter was elected. But when the next vacancy In the United States Senate from Delaware came along, J. Edward Addlcks Ad-dlcks came with It. Meantime he had become a legal and actual resident of Delaware: had Interested In his game a clever Jeweler of Dover,'. T. Frank Allee by name, and now himself a United Stales Senator, and they two had planned an elaborate campaign. From that time till last March Addlcks has had little Delaware 'n an almost continuous uproar. He began by paying the back poll taxes of a lot of voters disfranchised by reason of their non-payment of the same. When election came around they all, as a matter of course, voted for those legislative candidates candi-dates who were pledged to support him for the Senatorship. Sena-torship. Most of the Addlcks work that year, and, In fact, all throucrh the long contest, was waged In Kent and Sussex, the lower counties of the State. Newcastle county. In which Delaware's only city, Wilmington, Is located, was apparently not thought good ground for the Addlcks propaganda. Nobody outside of Delaware can have' any Idea of the Intensity of the Addlcks contest for the Senator-ship. Senator-ship. Sundry glimpses were gained by the whole country from time to time as the fight went on, however, like lurid lightning flashes from behind a murky cloud, when correspondents of various newspapers news-papers and periodicals, ranging In prominence from that enjoyed by such men as George Kennan, who first exposed the horrors of Russia's prisons, to that of fhc 525-a-week reporter, were sent by their managing editors to report and investigate. The tales these writers told and the Inferences they drew were shocking to the uninitiated and those who dislike to think evil of their fellows. They included tall yarns about the banking In a single day by thousands thou-sands of Individual depositors of whole series of crisp new national bank notes from Boston. They included accounts of the unexpected rise to. comparative financial finan-cial ease of voters who had been chronically "broke" for years. None of them, however, was quite so flat-footed and direct as the charming romance of the suit cases full of money told last fall by Mr. Lawson In his celebrated "Frenzied Finance" articles. Lawson boldly bold-ly declared that bales of currency were taken to Delaware Dela-ware to further the Addicks cause, and added that a plot which failed was a scheme to get away with the money. This part of the story was denied, but no legal action was brought to disprove it, and the details don't matter. t . In 1S94 Addlcks was pitted against DuPont, the powder manufacturer. Nobody was elected, and from that time till 1903 Delaware was without her full representation repre-sentation In the Senate part of the time without any Senator at all. The matter became a national scandal. At St. Louis, In 1S9C, It was carried to the fioor of the Republican National convention, where recognition was refused to the Addlcks delegation and a "scathing rebuke" was administered to the Addlcks supporters. Thut same year, "through the division of the Republican Re-publican press," the Democrats elected R. R. Kenney to the Senate. One day In 1S98 Addlcks came AVithln five votes of winning when the Legislature was In joint session, amid cries of "Traitor! Traitor! Lynch him! Lynch him" But he wasn't elected. In 1901 and 1903 the fight was Just about as close. In the latter j year, down to the day of the compromise, Addicks had J twenty-one votes out of the fifty-two votes' on Joint ballot, tie Democrats twenty-one and the "regular" Republicans ten. I It is doubtful whether the compromise which was effected on March 2, 1903. by which Alice, Addlcks's manager, and Frank Ball, a "regular" Republican, were elected, wouldi have come at all, had not a man! distinguished above most of his party's counsels Inter- ' vencd and begged the Republicans of Delaware to get together and "do something;" but he did, and the scandal was apparently brought to an end. Last year, however, Mr. Addlcks came to the front j again, determined, as of old, cither to ne chosen ai Senator himself or to prevent any one securing the I place. As In 1894, his opponent was DuPont, the pow-den pow-den man, and also as In 1894, the contest wound up, on i March 23 of this year, with this declaration by the I President of the Senate at the end of the legislative "A majority of voles not having been cast for any ( candidate for United States Senator, I hereby declare the position still vacant." It Is not believed that Addlcks will ever renew , the light. His long-drawn-out contest1 has given the cynically minded much comfort, but Its outcome. I though unconscionably delayed, must be taken as I proof that at least in Delaware mere money cannot j elect a man to the United States Senate. Had Ad- j dicks been' a politician as well as a multi-millionaire j he might now be a Senator, and witho.ut the expend!-ture expend!-ture of nearly as much money as he Is reputed to have laid out In his fight. |
